PRAISE IS NOT PRAISEWORTHY!!

Life unfortunately has no guidelines. Neither does it have any purpose on its own. The purpose we believe our life has, is just an assumption. Truthfully speaking we don’t even know why we have been encumbered with this life. Each one of our lives is a mission without a specified target and most of us are reluctant missionaries. We have all been recruited whether we are willing or not…. Since we have not been given a purpose in life, I think the only purpose of each of our lives is to find our own individual purposes in life! To each man his own purpose!! The system of life is really intelligent! But eventually it makes fools out of us. The system works in such a way that whatever a man believes to be his purpose, that eventually becomes his purpose. So initially finding the purpose is the only purpose! As time passes whatever man considers to be worthy of being a purpose, so it becomes. The obvious solution would be to do whatever one loves and eventually one will end up finding his/her purpose in that. Such a purpose will not only keep the person happy but will also help him to attain the highest amount of satisfaction… Very simple eh?? But then all that is simple isn’t easy. And moreover man is never ready to believe in the simple. For him things have to be complicated, puzzling and difficult to find! Anything that is obvious, helpful and readily available loses its value. That’s one of the reasons why gold or diamond is valued a lot more than copper or coal. Just think! What would be diamond’s value if it was found in every other rock. And maybe thats why a girlfriend's love is given more importance than parent's love! When such an atitude prevails, would a person believe you if you tell him that his ultimate conundrum in life – the purpose of his life is as simple as finding what he loves doing most and doing it as best as he can. Life holds its value only as long as it is difficult to understand and is surrounded by an aura of mystic divinity! Life is interesting only as long as it is a puzzle handed down to us by some divine power and life has value only as long as its purpose can be explained in difficult to understand, hi-fi words like –

To serve God

To find the true meaning of life(why don’t they refer the oxford dictionary???)

To realize the power of the divine being who created us and to align our life with this higher power

To attain salvation

Add any other crap which you hear daily from your parents, teachers and every other human being

What if this in’t the truth?? What if actually we aren’t special beings sent by a divine power to complete his work on earth?? What if the purpose of our life is as simple as doing what we love? Well that’s when we realize that our life isn’t special…. The notion of us being just as normal as any dog in the street and any other animal or insect in the world is too difficult for us to digest! So we end up fooling ourselves and believing in a purpose that is not only overly optimistic but also entirely euphemistic.

What harm you might ask is incurred in having a sense of being special?? A lot I believe! Though every man outwardly propounds a larger than life purpose, inwardly he knows that he has no idea what his real purpose is! Not ready to search for his actual purpose, man invented two substitutes: money and praise! That’s when mankind started its journey to doom. Man lost not only his purpose in life, but lost his life as well to these two substitutes. Man’s greatest weakness is that whenever he is in doubt, he follows the crowd. That’s why we still commit the same mistakes that were committed aeons ago. Atleast once in his lifetime, every man doubts his purpose in life and that’s when his actual purpose gets substitued by praise and money! Life then becomes a business. For everything man did, he expected remuneration. Outwardly money was the reason man worked. But there was a bigger, inner reason… PRAISE!! Money played a major role in determining man’s purpose. But money is actually a disguised form of praise. The money you give a person for his work is actually an indirect indication of the amount of praise you shower on him. And there are things that man does for which he doesn’t expect money in return. Praise is what man looks for in those circumstances. Thus directly or indirectly, praise became man’s only purpose in life. Praise became man’s justification for living on earth. No man is ready to believe that his life just happened by accident. Every man believes that he is special and the praise he receives is his justification for his speciality! So the more praise a person receives the more special he is! Hence praise became the solitary purpose of every person’s life. And the future generations blindly followed their ancestors! (Like my father always says: “If so many of them are doing it, then it ought to be right”!! The fact that humans are mere copycats and that we might as well be copying the mistakes of our ancestors is not taken into consideration!)

Man started evaluating his worth depending on the amount of praise he received. Praise in itself is not bad. Genuine praise when bestowed upon an individual motivates and encourages him to progress further! But there are two spin-offs of praise which are highly destructive and much more widely prevalent than genuine praise -

When man receives praise on a constant basis, he gets accustomed to it and becomes addicted. That’s when vanity sets in and man becomes conceited. At this stage man needs needs praise at regular intervals to satisfy his exaggerated feeling of self importance and is ready to do anthing for the sake of praise. Such a man becomes useless, worthless and helpless.

Praise when given to genuinely appreciate someone without expecting anything in return helps in motivating the person. But when praise is used as a means, expecting something in return from the other, it becomes flattery! Flattery gets confused with genuine praise and genuine praise gets confused with flattery. In the end, only confusion prevails!

So every person starts searching for (genuine)praise from others and since every other person is doing the same, praise becomes a scarcity. The scarcer it became, the more man coveted it. In the end, man became a monkey doing all sorts of tricks to earn praise from others. The situation became so worse that people started doing what earned them praise and not what they loved. Even when they did what they loved, they expected praise in return. So praise became the primary form of remuneration. You satisfy someone’s need and he will praise you. You be the person your father wants you to be and you earn his praise. Same for mother, relatives, teachers and every other person. To earn their praise, you have to fulfill the standards set by them. In the course of satisfying everyone’s whim and fancy, man lost his individuality. No praise for being yourself!! So individuality was the price man paid for praise!!!

That’s when you realise that Praise isn’t Praiseworthy.

My own experience with praise is the inspiration for this blog. When I started blogging, it was due to the love I had for writing and the pleasure I derived from writing these posts. Unfortunately I wasn’t satisfied with just pleasure. Being the human I am, I too craved for praise. So I sent my blog site address to every person I knew.. ..And waited…. And waited… But others were busy with their own commitments and not many ventured to read my blog. Love for writing wasn’t enough for me. I needed praise as well. Dejected and despondent, I was about to discontinue writing my blog when atlast I got what I wanted. I am grateful to that one person who read every post I read and magnanimously praised me: Archana. Her praise I believe is genuine… no I don’t mean to say that my blog is worthy of praise. Archana has got nothing to gain from me through flattery and hence I believe the praise has to be genuine. Genuine praise instills confidence and motivates…. Her praise was what kept me writing and helped me to persevere through the lean phases. But unfortunately I fell prey to praise and became conceited. My blog writing centered around one remuneration: Archana’s praise. As far as it was readily available, it was fine. Only during the absence of it did I realize how much I had become accustomed to praise. Until I received the praise I desired, I couldn’t think of anything else. That’s when I realized that my love for writing has been replaced by my craving for praise. That’s when I realized that praise isn’t praiseworthy. In small amounts, it encourages you and keeps you going, but when you get accustomed to it, you become worse than a drug addict. I hope my awareness has helped me to break the addiction and hopefully I will again start writing for the love of it!!